The week that Citron died (... or did it?)

🍊 Hello and welcome to another roundup edition of The Memory Core newsletter!

This was a huge week for emulation news (for handhelds, not so much), but I want to highlight one particular story before hopping into the roundup. As you can probably guess, it's about the Nintendo Switch emulator Citron.

As a sidenote, I'll be sending a few more exclusives next week, so watch your inbox.

Scroll to the end for an exciting development in new N64 games.

The resurrection of Citron

Just a few weeks before Easter, the Nintendo Switch emulator Citron has died and returned from the grave.

It's not immediately clear why Citron's lead developer Zephyron decided to wipe the GitHub, Forgejo, website, and Discord from the face of the internet earlier this week, but rumors are swirling of leaked documents and doxxing.

I don't want to comment on rumors and drama, but the end result is that Citron is dead, and it had nothing to do with the recent DMCA notices from Nintendo.

Then, a few days ago, it reappeared under a different name: Kintoki.

The project appears to be identical to the most recent Citron build, with even the logo remaining the same. It may be missing a few of the latest CI builds, but otherwise it's up to date.

So who is behind this revival?

That's still a bit of a mystery. There were rumors that, at the very least, someone would continue work on the unreleased iOS port of Citron, but this appears to be a full continuation of the project.

It's also possible that Zephyron is still behind the emulator, as they have changed names in the past. They used a different alias in the days of Uzuy, another Yuzu fork that pre-dates Citron.

In any case, the good news is that development work on Citron appears to be continuing. Hopefully, without the hobby drama.

Handheld highlights

🙅‍♂️ The Steam Deck is now sold out just about everywhere in the world, with Valve adding a note to the product page that it's due to "memory and storage shortages". It doesn't look like we'll see a Steam Deck 2 any time soon, sorry. [Valve]

🎛️ The "Pocket Super Knob 5000" was announced this week, and despite it having a literal knob, the most notable thing about it is the name. Super Knob feels a little boastful for a 5-inch handheld, but who am I to judge? [X]

FPGA focus

🎮 This week, we are finally starting to see previews/reviews of the ModRetro M64, and it looks like a compelling alternative to the Analogue 3D. The colors and knob (what is it with knobs this week?) on the front look a little Fisher-Price, but the emulation experience appears to be top-notch. The software isn't quite finished, but it may not be long before it's available to buy. [RetroDodo]

The emulator report

🍈 In case you missed it, SapphireRhodonite released a test build of melonDS for Android with the first implementation of offline RetroAchievements. Check out my newsletter from earlier this week for more details about how it all works, or just download it and start hunting those DS cheevos. [Interview] [Download]

👆 Speaking of SapphireRhodonite, he also released a new fork of Vita3K for dual-screen devices that restores the unique handheld's touch support. Instead of touching the back of the device, it uses the second screen of your AYN Thor or Pocket DS. [Download]

🌴 Eden put out a new release candidate this week, with the headline feature of playing mods and DLC without having to install them to memory. This can save a lot of storage, which is great news considering just how expensive that storage has become in 2026. [Download]

🐬 Dolphin released a big update this week which added support for the GameCube-based Triforce arcade platform. There is a massive blog post with far more details than I can mention here (go read it), but make sure you grab one of the latest dev releases (2512-395 or newer) to try it out. It hasn't rolled out to the stable builds quite yet. [Blog] [Download]

📦 Izzy2lost is now taking a shot at porting the original Xbox emulator Xemu to Android with X1 BOX. They've previously ported the PSX2 emulator to Android, but got some flak for making it a paid download on the Play Store. It's still listed as coming soon, but it may not be long before it's ready for testing. [GitHub]

💮 Azahar's Vulkan shader cache, which I wrote about last week, is now available in an alpha build. Note that this is still experimental and should really only be used for testing. The dev team also announced that it will now start making alpha builds public earlier in the release cycle to provide a "larger window for users to give feedback on the upcoming release." So get out there and provide some feedback, users. [GitHub]

👾 Argosy Launcher, which serves as an Android frontend for self-hosted RomM servers, will soon have dual-screen support for devices like the AYN Thor. The developer is integrating lots of other cool features, too, so check out the post for more details. [Reddit]

Retro archives

⚙️ A new open-source tool for homebrew N64 games released in alpha this week, and it might be a game-changer for new games. HailToDodongo's Pyrite64 uses Libdragon and tiny3d as a base, but makes the entire development process easier. You can think of it as Godot for N64 games. It's still early in development, but this could be a wonderful pairing with all of the N64 FPGA consoles now on the market. [Trailer] [GitHub]

🤖 On that note, the cult classic N64 game Bangai-O now has a working fan translation. The side-scrolling shooter never officially made its way out of Japan, but it's a pretty unique title in the N64 catalog. [Trailer] [Patch]

💾 The original 1991 Lemmings game turns 35 this year, and there's an excellent new fan documentary on YouTube to celebrate the making of the groundbreaking puzzle game. It's filled with interviews and interesting insights, so definitely check it out if you have any fondness for 90s PC gaming. [YouTube]

🆕 The excellent Super Mario Bros. Remastered tool, which I first wrote about back in September of last year, has a new experimental 1.1 release that's filled with new toys to play with. Just watch the trailer, trust me. [Trailer] [Download]

🪦 Finally, the excellent Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 mobile ports will soon be taken offline, so go download them while you can. Once they're added to your account you should still have access to them once they're removed. Maybe that was the true meaning of SEGA Forever. [Sonic 1 Android] [Sonic 1 iOS] [Sonic 2 Android] [Sonic 2 iOS]